Every week we explore a new League of Legends champion. This week we take on Darius, The Hand of Noxus.
Ever wanted to try skull splitting? Especially enthusiastic about the French Revolution? Or simply just a Toplaner looking to kill their enemies in cold blood? In any of these cases, Darius is the champion for you, and here’s how to play him.
Learning The Basics
Darius is equipped with relatively simple abilities, but using them properly requires understanding and knowledge. Your passive is key when it comes to killing your opponent. Hitting them with abilities applies bleeding stacks, and once you get 5 stacks on an opponent, you’re ready to raise hell with your Ultimate, Noxian Guillotine. This is why it’s extremely important to efficiently build up stacks quickly.
Your primary tools for this will be your Q and W. Decimate (Q) lets you swing your axe around after a slight delay, hitting enemies around you, while dealing extra damage and applying a stack to those on the edge at the axe’s blade. Hitting enemies with the blade is extremely important to kill them quickly, so we have some nifty tricks to help you with that.
Basic combo and vulnerabilities
Your first basic combo will be: Auto Attack > W > Q. Because your W, Crippling Strike, is what we call an Auto Attack Reset, we’ll want to use it directly after Auto Attacking. This lets you efficiently stack bleeding stacks quickly. Because your W slows the target pretty heavily, we can use that slow to land an easy Q. Bad Darius players will very often use Q out of nowhere without slows or setup, often missing their target. This will leave Darius vulnerable, as without his Q, Darius may prove extremely weak.
The Pull-In Game
What if the enemy isn’t getting in range for you to do the basic combo? That’s where our pull-in ability, Apprehend (E), comes into play. By pulling the enemy into melee range, we can easily use the rest of our basic combo to start a fight. The combo evolves as follows: E > Auto Attack > W > Q.
This combo is useful, but it has its flaws. When laning against enemies with dashes like Riven and Fiora, it may prove difficult to land the Q, as they will dash out of it, even if you slow them, and remember, without your Q, you’re vulnerable.
That’s why strong Darius players make sure to use their Apprehend (E) only when they really need to. Most of their all-ins aren’t started with Apprehend. Because champions like Riven and Fiora are always melee range, the best way to take them down, is to simply walk up, and hit them. So how does this work exactly?
“Did he just walk up, slowly.. and and Auto Attack?”
This is how it will go: Darius will walk up to the enemy toplaner, and smack them with the first Auto Attack > W combo. The enemy toplaner will usually respond with some sort of escape or disengage, like Riven’s E, Valor. This is when Darius will respond in kind with his favorite Summoner Spell: Ghost.
The next step is to use this movement speed advantage to stay with the enemy toplaner, hitting them with auto attacks and slowly building up bleeding stacks on the target, while exhausting the enemy’s disengage tools. Once you feel like you can’t catch up anymore, finish up your all in with E > Q. You will use your E to land the edge of your Q with full guarantee, and as you have already exhausted all of the enemy’s dashes, there’s no way to get out. Usually, your ultimate, Noxian Guillotine, will finish the job, as you’ll have accumulated 5 bleeding stacks over time, making your ultimate obscenely strong.
Full Combo (with Ghost): Auto > W > Auto > Auto > E > Q > R.
This is why taking Ghost is extremely important, but what’s also important is knowing when you’re able to go in, and being patient when you can’t. The best time to all in is when you’ve frozen the lane. Freezing is a technique that’s extremely important to learn for Darius players, so be sure to check it out.
Absolutely key to playing Darius is using spells efficiently and never wasting a single one of them. We highly recommend that you watch videos of good Darius players, while observing exactly how and when they use their abilities, as simply running in headfirst will only work if you know what you’re doing. After all, learning from the best is simply the best. Darius may not seem smart, but his hefty sack of knowledge is what has kept him alive through the Noxian rampage, so follow suit.
The Noxian Revolution can now officially start, and heads may now be deposited on the floor. Killing people is the most enjoyable thing about playing Darius, and you’re now perfectly equipped to do it. Good luck general.
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Image credit: Riot Games
